The Storytelling Formula That Will Change Your Life (and Business)

imagine if you had an exact formula to tell any story from your life and Captivate the attention of the entire world what if you posted a 60-second video tonight and woke up tomorrow to 200,000 new followers your entire website sold out and the Today Show reaching out to interview you well that's what happened to me and I'm going to give you the four-step storytelling formula that changed my life in the beginning of 2024 I accidentally told my life story so well that it changed my life forever but what I didn't realize at the time was

that I was actually following a very specific formula that is laid out in this book stories that stick by Kindra Hall today I'm going to be deep diving into this book so that by the end of this video you will have a exact formula to plug elements from your own life into a story and start captivating an audience whether it's for selling your artwork for building your online influence for your business or for closing sales in your sales job my name is Kayla Carlile I'm a full-time artist and on my channel I encourage other people

to chase their dreams let's get into it part one the irresistible power of Storytelling Hall starts out this book by describing a trip in which her and her husband are in Slovenia and she describes her husband as the type of person who never buys anything ever he is the kind of person who won't buy himself new shoes till they're worn out he doesn't ever give into a sales pitch and he avoids going in stores now she likes to Window Shop and she likes to go into the shops when they're traveling so she describes him following

her into a number of shops on their trip but the specific story she tells is of a shop in which she entered to look at a pair of shoes but suddenly they were cornered by a cologne salesman the salesman asks her husband if he's looking for cologne she laughs in her head because she knows he will never fall for any sales pitch and suddenly the salesman begins to tell a story and because I know you're dying to know let me just read you the short story that the salesman told this is our best seller he

stated his fingers gently framing the Box this is eight and Bob in 1937 a young handsome American college student was touring the French Riviera at 20 years old there was something special about him all who met him could sense a rising star the young clerk paused to see if we were listening we were one day this young man was out and about the town when he encountered a Frenchman a Parisian Aristocrat and perfume connoisseur of course the young man didn't know this all he knows is the man smells incredible being quite Charming the ambitious American

convinces the man who never sold his scents to share a small sample of the irresistible cologne as you can imagine when the young man returns to the states others were entranced by the scent as well and if he wasn't irresistible before he certainly was now the young man knew he was on to something so he wrote to the Frenchman imploring that he send eight more samples and one for Bob you see Bob was the young man's brother and the young man well you probably know him as John or simply Jay the clerk's voice trailed off

before the end of the sentence and Michael her husband whispered FK yes the clerk nodded the man in question was none other than John F Kennedy and the sample was for his brother Robert this is JFK's cologne her husband asked indeed it is of course as you know international relations weren't always easy between the United States and France and though I'm no history expert I do know that shipping bottles of cologne became increasingly more difficult and so in order to protect the final shipments from the Nazis the last few bottles were hidden the clerk glanced

up at us in books and on that queue the clerk opened the box and inside the box was a book and nestled inside the pages that had been perfectly cut way to frame its contents was a beautiful Crystal bottle of cologne and at that moment Michael said three words I've never heard him say before I'll take it SE hul explains how the power of Storytelling can transform someone who has no intention of buying into a loyal customer and here's how the gaps in business and the bridges that close them and don't close them now most

of this book is framed through the lens of business and sales but don't let that push you away because this can apply to you as well even if you aren't a Salesman Hall talks about the gaps in business the Gap that most people are trying to close is the gap between the product and the consumer you want to get the product from point A to point B and close the gap but since I'm an artist let's frame this another way this could be the gap between the artist and their collectors this could be the gap

between the musician and Their audience the gap between an influencer and their followers or the gap between an author and their readers Hall even points out that there's a gap between recruiters and potential employees a gap between managers and employees and the people who succeed in business are the ones who close the gap the best so who can build the best Bridge Hall says that the best Bridges to close these gaps are made up of three elements attention influence and transformation and storytelling just so happens to solve all three of those firstly your Bridge must

first capture the attention of the audience secondly it must influence them to take the action you desire whether it's listen to the music follow you purchase your product and thirdly it needs to transform them once you've transformed them then you never need to bridge the gap again and the tragedy is that most businesses or influencers or salespeople they only use one or two of these elements but not all three think about the realtor who has their face plastered on every bus stop bench in town or the person dressed up as Darth Vader spinning The Mattress

Store sign those things things might get your attention but do they influence you and do they transform you and as a professional Storyteller Hall has worked with a number of Executives in higher education and she recalls a particular conversation in which these professors were complaining about the attention span of their students and she proposed the concept of instead of using bullet points in a lecture why don't you try to incorporate your lesson into a story and the response of these higher education professors and Executives was you expect these kids who have the attention span of

a goldfish to pay attention to an even longer story and Hall points out that this is a fatal error that so many businesses make they shift the blame conveniently onto the recipient of the message instead of perhaps looking at the message itself because when done correctly attention is given freely it doesn't have to be wrestled away it doesn't have to be stolen or manipulated and in fact when someone is truly captivated they often don't even notice that they're giving their attention away in the first place and in fact stories influence us and Captivate Us more

than we we might realize researchers have found that when we become enthralled and captivated in a story we actually begin to take on elements of the characters and the plot of the story itself it's why you might have memories of leaving a movie theater and almost feeling like you want to be a wizard as a child you watch Harry Potter and you kind of feel British for a few hours just me and with a good story resistance dissipates because they begin to take on the perspective of the Storyteller so now that we've established the power

of stories and you've heard a few powerful stories let's talk about why stories impact Us by talking a little bit about the brain neuroscientist Zach Paul has actually been nicknamed Dr love because he was the one to First figure out that oxytocin isn't just a bonding chemical between mother and child in fact our brain releases oxytocin when Trust is formed it helps us Bond trust and love each other and once he discovered this Paul started wondering well does our brain release oxytocin when we watch movies and so they did a study they showed a set

of participants two different commercials two different short films both of them followed a young boy who was 2 years old with terminal cancer and his father and in the first commercial you see the father struggling to to be able to connect emotionally with his son because he knows that the end is near and right at the end it shows them finally bonding and connecting and then this the boy passes away it's gut-wrenching the second film also follows the boy with cancer and his father but it follows them throughout a day at the zoo and it

has information about his cancer but it's not the gut-wrenching emotional story Paul's team measured the oxytocin release in the brains of the people watching those two films and the people that watched the first gut-wrenching emotional version of that story had a 47% increase in oxytocin release in their brain and and then those people were more generous they donated to cancer Charities Hall explains that stories don't just make us like each other stories make us like each other they make us similar to each other it's why you feel transported into movies and it's why your palms

sweat and you get nervous while you're watching James Bond dodge bullets and it's why you shed a tear when Bambi's mom gets shot but there's a catch here not everything is a story and not all stories are created equal so what makes a story great so this is where we get into into the four elements of a good story number one is identifiable characters number two is authentic emotion number three is a significant moment and number four is specific details now if you've done research on storytelling or read other storytelling books you've probably heard the

term hero which kind of implies that you have to have done something Epic or amazing to be the character in a story but that's not true what we really care about is having an identifiable character that your audience relates to and an identifiable character is not your company name it's not your product it's not your software or your soap or your service we need a character a person considering that your audience is probably human let's go with a human number two authentic emotion this emotion doesn't have to be dramatic it can be as simple as

curiosity or wonder or frustration and also this isn't supposed to be the emotion that the reader or the viewer feels this is the emotion that your main character is experiencing in the story three is a significant moment and Hall clarifies that if you're looking at the at the story as a map you need to be zoomed in on one location one specific incident that happened that means like one specific day one specific hour one specific interaction we don't want to be big and Broad for example she talks about working with Executives from a New York

private school and they were speaking at an event about the importance of this new international program that they opened in South Africa and so many of the stories that these Executives started out telling were like I remember it was so wonderful to see the kids experience a new culture or it was like nothing I'd ever seen before these are not a specific moment these are way too broad and instead she worked with them each to clarify and refine down to one story for one of them it was one student in the cafeteria and their interaction

with a new cultures food now number four is specific details and this is unexpected imagery or details that help transform your viewer into the story so if you're speaking to a 1980s group you could mention the boom box if you're talking to a group of parents you could mention the frustration of trying to fold up and cram the stroller into the trunk you want to be relatable you want your character to be relatable to your audience you want to show the audience that you understand them you are similar in 1971 Tom Burell started the first

all black Ad Agency and he got very popular with his slogan which was black people are not darkskinned white people and what does this mean well up up until that point it was very customary for commercials to be filmed twice using the same script they would film it once with white actors and the second time with black actors but the script the setting nothing else changed and these commercials these they just did not resonate with their black audience because it did not feel authentic the cultural nuances and differences between those two audiences were completely ignored

and this is what specific details means knowing your audience and making the setting of The Story feel relatable to them and when I think back to the video that I posted that blew up my life a little bit I can't put it in this video it'll be flagged for copyright for the music but you can go find it on my Instagram it's my top pinned real uh I think the first opening scene I mentioned the lunchroom in high school and I think that is something that is relatable to anybody above the age of 16 anybody

who's ever gone to high school has experienced the nerve-wracking sensation of walking into a full cafeteria and trying to figure out where to sit by starting my story in a high school setting and then moving into the classroom of a teacher that made me feel comfortable those are really relatable feelings for anyone who's ever gone through a public school okay so now that we have the four story elements let's talk about the structure of the story now every story has a beginning a middle and an end but Hall breaks this down in an even better

way which is there's a normal there's an explosion and there's a new normal now let's talk about the normal the normal is how things were before things changed this is what gets your audience attached to the characters this is where you give your audience a reason to care about the explosion it's why when you turn on the news and you see the store owner in front of their store after it was burglarized or you see the family in front of their home destroyed by a hurricane there's it's harder to connect to those stories because we

didn't know the before we didn't get attached to the normal now if you get to see what the normal looked like what the beautiful home looked like before it was destroyed then you get a little more attached and the explosion has more of an impact on you and Hall is clear that the explosion doesn't have to be dramatic or drastic or violent or extreme this is just the happening it's the thing that happens the change sometimes the explosion is actually just your character having a realization it could be them making a decision or having a

mindset shift it's the point when things were one way and then suddenly they weren't then we get to The New Normal this is where you share what life is like after the change how you are wiser better stronger how you are improved in the world of advertising this is where you show how the client's life is so much better after using the product and don't get confused your story does not have to be complicated it can be so simply put that it can fit into three sentences if you want but Hall talks about in the

world of business there are four essential story types that no matter what your problem is no matter what the Gap is that you're trying to close one of these four story types will close the gap so let's get into what the four essential stories are the first one is the value story now this one the first thing that might come to mind is the value of a service or a product and when it comes to sales and marketing the value story is king So This is Bridging the Gap between the product and the consumer and

showing the value of that product to the consumer now Hall references a book by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Conan Thinking Fast and Slow which in which he talks about the two systems in the brain he talks about system one and system two system one is your subconscious mind it's the mind that makes most of the decisions and allows you to compute and figure out things rapidly system 2 is reserved for things like complex calculations things that actually require your conscious attention so system one for example is the system engaged when I ask you the question

how many of each animal did Moses put on the ark and if you said two that was your system one answering when in fact the answer is Moses wasn't the one that put the animals on the ark it was Noah so so clearly our system one still makes mistakes system one is characterized by cognitive ease we saving Energy System to is characterized by cognitive strain it takes strain and effort to think about things with system too and in the world of marketing and storytelling Kindra Hall says why would you want to engage system 2 if

you could essentially get the value across using only system one she Compares this to a time that she entered a gelato shop and everybody seemed to be really frustrated the line was super long parents were telling their kids to hurry up and pick one and then she realized why when she looked at the Gelato at the front counter and all of the bins were covered and instead every everybody had to decide which gelato they wanted by looking and reading the flavors on the wall instead of just looking and picking the one that your eye was

drawn to which is cognitive ease people were being forced to read kids were being forced to try to read the sign or try to remember the flavor that was just read to them so the following things are traps for engaging system 2 lists bullet points price comparisons features benefits these things are all causing cognitive strain how can you get your value across without engaging system too enter a company called workiva which is a company that Hall worked with on their marketing they have a software that essentially streamlines cross checks data across important crucial documents to

make sure that all of the numbers and data matches this eliminates the need for somebody meticulously coming through documents for hours to make sure all the numbers are right of course this product is so useful and saves so much time but they were having a hard time marketing themselves so they released this commercial they follow an employee at a customer relations firm and he is at his desk and you can see that he he's tired of his dad bod he's decided he's going to take his health into his own hands so after work he signs

up for a triathlon he goes out he gets a new bike he buys a speedo he gets a gym membership at a fancy gym with an Olympic siiz pool and now we see him every day after work before work training running he's happy he's fulfilled he's working towards this goal until the end of the quarter hits and suddenly his boss says that him and his whole office have to stay late and come in early to cross check every piece of data to make sure there are no errors and we see him now his Speedo sits

in his car his bike collects dust his pool membership goes unused and he realizes he has to give up his dream of competing in the triathlon cuz he doesn't have time anymore until the next day he shows up to work and his job has started using work Eva and suddenly now everybody's getting off at 5: they're showing up on time at 9: and it shows him training again and then the closing scene is him competing in the triathlon and who's there cheering him on all of his co-workers because they have the time now in this

ad Hall points out there were no details about the product itself about the software we really don't know anything about the software except wow it makes our life better they were able to get the value across without ever engaging system to now of course if you're intrigued now as a business owner you're going to go research and find out all the details by then you've already cemented this is a valuable service that's because value isn't about the product it's about the person so fitting a value story Into the normal Explosion New Normal framework would mean

in the normal what is your person's problem what is keeping them up at night what are their aches and pains what are they upset about what stresses them out okay that's the normal then the explosion how does your product or your service or your YouTube channel solv their problem and then New Normal what's their life like after the explosion now because I'm an artist there was a part this store this book is full of stories if you haven't picked up on already there was one that caught my attention in particular because it was about a

photographer and it seems to align a little bit with art this photographer wanted to do photo sessions of adults with their parents their elderly parents like for Mother's Day and so she put out an ad got no no interest so later she was at home she was digging through a chest in her closet she was just desperately trying to find a photo of her and her grandmother who had passed away only to realize they didn't take any they didn't take any pictures and that's when it hit her that's the problem she re created her whole

ad she wrote about her grandmother her beloved grandmother and how all she wished was that while she was alive they had taken a photo together and the importance of capturing those moments before the time is gone and suddenly she had more inquiries more photo shoots set up than she could even take on all right essential Story number two this is the founder story everyone has a Founder story even if you're not a business owner even if you're not a company a Founder story is essentially the story of the moment that you realized this is what

you wanted to do the moment you realized this is a business the moment you realized this is my passion it's a story of how what you do came to be for me I would characterize my viral story as a Founder story maybe it's about the moment that the idea first struck or an obstacle you had to overcome and Hall talks about one of the most famous founder stories that you may have heard of and it's about three roommates in San Francisco who were barely struggling to make their rent and San Francisco is an expensive city

but San Francisco also is where large design conferences happen and so that weekend all the hotels in town were sold out for a big design conference and the three roommates in their 20s had an idea what if we rent out a room of our house but they didn't have a room in their house so what they actually did was get three air mattresses and rent them out in their living room and that was the start of Airbnb now Airbnb actually had a very hard time getting investors and Venture capitalists to get on board until they

started telling that story and to analyze the power of story in business Hall and her team actually analyzed the entire season 6 of Shark Tank and they found that 76.7% of the business pitches included a story and the ones that did include a story performed exponentially better than the ones who did not but in the world of business everyone's trying to differentiate themselves and Hall talks about how she works with Executives a lot in these big forums where she'll ask questions like how many of you have commitment to Excellence in your mission statement and the

entire room raises their hand how many of you say customer service is what sets you apart everyone raises their hand so how do you make yourself different without looking like everyone else trying to make themselves look different this is where when all else is considered equal story will always win so where do you look for your founder story if you're not sure where it is well here are some tips of advice number one think back to your childhood number two think back to a there has to be a better way moment maybe this is the

moment that your creation came to be and number three look for The Blood Sweat and Tears the times that you had to work your butt off and some pitfalls to avoid when thinking about a Founder story is number one don't confuse this with a value story this needs to be about the founder not the product number two don't not tell the story because you're afraid the story is not good enough all of us are guilty of this of thinking I well I don't really have a good enough story I have my story is not dark

enough or I haven't overcome enough it's not dramatic enough that is not what makes a good story what makes a good story is connection Rel relability number three is not telling the founder story because you're tired of telling it now imagine if the actors on Broadway decided that they were tired of telling tired of saying their lines the best they could because they'd done it a 100 shows in a row each audience is a new audience another Pitfall that Hall mentions is not having an authentic emotion or not balancing the positive and negative emotions in

your story if your story has a negative emotion it should be equally balanced with the outcome of the event that happened the good that came from that negative people don't want to hear a sad story if it doesn't come with a happy ending and the last Pitfall is don't feel like you can't tell the founder story just because you're not the founder if you want to use the founder story of your company when talking to new clients this is still a way to build connection with your audience all right the third essential story that all

businesses need to tell is the purpose story story this Hall describes as being mostly beneficial when corporations get larger or organizations get larger and larger and you need to align everybody around a a common purpose it can be used to boost morale motivate unite connect people this is the biggest Gap to bridge between CEOs and their employees firstly when crafting a purpose story you need to think first what do you want your audience to feel do you want them to feel motivated United inspired like their work has a purpose figure that out first an example

of a good purpose story that Hall gives is of the CEO of a lowincome hospital he gave a speech at a banquet and in his speech he told a story about he how he showed up for a town hall meeting when he was a brand new CEO and it was in an old Community Center with folding chairs and an old folding table in the back with water bottles and store-bought cookies and right as he was about to take the stage to speak a man wandered in who was clearly lacking resources may be homeless and he

said that in that moment normally that would be when people rush over and politely lead him out and say oh this event isn't for you but instead the hospital staff and the people that were there they rushed over to him with a water bottle and with cookies and they helped him find a seat and he ended his speech by saying you our people our community gave that man dignity for a moment and that is what our community is all about it's in those moments that we leave our Legacy now Hall gives a little warm warning

in a purpose story that there is little margin for error and you and you want to craft this perfectly otherwise it may come across as a story that's just told for no reason you risk people walking away and thinking well what was the point in that or you risk coming across as arrogant and out of touch so one way to narrow down your story is to think when have I seen our purpose in action when did I have the realization when did I learn the lesson and then using those same four components of identifiable characters

authentic emotion a specific moment and specific details you craft your story and fittingly in 2010 a psychologist at Emory University did a study on kids he wanted to figure out what produced the most mentally healthy kids and so he quizzed them on how much they knew about their family history he asked them questions like where did your parents go to high school do you know where your parents met do you know if anyone in your family has had a sickness or illness do you know where your grandparents grew up and overwhelmingly the kids that knew

an more answers about their family history had a higher sense of self-control over their life and higher self-esteem this got Hall's team curious is this the same concept when working with a company and so they did a survey they asked employees how much do you know about the founding story of your company questions about how it started and of the employees who answered yes that they knew more about the history of their company company or organization they were 40% more likely to answer yes when asked if they beli that their job made a difference in

the world lastly in the four essential stories is the customer story now this can sound really similar to the value story because all of the components are the same you're going to have a normal you're going to have the explosion and then you're going to have how the customer was impacted afterwards but the main difference here is that the customer story has to come from the perspective of the customer or it will not have the impact that you desire and an example of a failed customer story came from McDonald's in the United Kingdom it was

pulled almost immediately it followed a young boy asking his mom what his dad was like before he passed away they go through the town and they're by a statue and the mom says he was as big as a statue and the boy straightens up and she they pass a soccer field and she says he was a great soccer player and the boy tries to kick a ball but he's really bad she says your Dad's shoes were always shiny and the boy looks down at his scuffed shoes and then alas they arrive at mcdonal Donald's and

the mom's talking and as the boy takes a bite of his fish filet sandwich the mom says and the fish sandwich was your dad's favorite but he could never eat it without and then it looks it pans to the boy and she says tartar sauce on his chin and the boy has tartar sauce on his chin finally he has something in common with his deceased father this ad caused outrage because how dare you exploit child bereavement okay it was pulled it was considered insensitive even if this if this was a true story they should have

had the boy tell it it was insensitive for McDonald's to try to tell the story because it made it look very fictional and it seemed exploitative so how do you get your customers to tell the story for you number one you have to ask you have to ask them to leave a review and number two you have to ask specifically for what you want ask them to leave a review with a story of how it changed their life ask for a story number three you have to showcase these stories somewhere if it's for your business

you have to Showcase them on your website that brings us into our last little segment which is crafting your story and if you are still struggling to come up with an idea for a story from your life Hall recommends thinking in nouns a noun is a person place or thing and these are the things that make our life go around so sit down and instead of trying to think of stories from your life write out nouns from your life people places and things that come to mind when you think of your life story and then

look at each noun and what does it make you feel she talks about how it would was really hard for her to get her grandfather to tell stories from World War II she would ask if he had stories and he'd say no so instead she started asking better questions she said Grandpa where were you stationed in World War II and he said Perth Australia and she said Grandpa Tell me about Perth Australia and suddenly the story started flowing so if you want better stories start asking better questions think about your first times your most embarrassing

moments the best days of your life and the worst days of your life and hul suggest that if you're still having trouble if you've narrowed down a moment but you're having trouble putting it together into a story start with the explosion and then work back to the normal it's easy most of us don't even realize that we're in a story until the explosion happens so start with the big moment then work yourself back and figure out what was the normal before that moment happened and if you can Master the normal and the explosion Hall says

that the new normal basically writes itself and how long should my story be is a common question and and Hall references a Mark Twain quote to answer this question which is if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter brevity is at times more difficult to write than length your story should only be as long as it needs to be and it should still leave the viewer The Listener with questions in mind now let's do something fun to end this video if you're still here at the very end leave a comment below

with a story or an idea of a story that you're thinking about telling and then let's help each other out let's give each other some feedback leave a comment or a question on someone's comment below and let's help each other come up with our best stories and start captivating audiences thank you for watching I hope this video helped now get out there and start telling your story